Technology law blog by a Canadian information technology and intellectual property law lawyer and trade-mark agent dealing with issues including software, copyright, privacy, the Internet, electronic commerce, computers

Archives

Feeds

Follow me on Twitter

About

David Canton is a business lawyer and trade-mark agent with a practice focusing on technology issues and technology companies. For more detail about David and his practice, see his profile on the Harrison Pensa website, and his promo video.

5 thoughts on “About”

Does the anti-spam legislation have legs? I mean, my own experience is that laws that overreach and capture too many innocents in their wake never stand up to constitutional scrutiny. The fact there are so many uncertainties, and the fact government interpretation of the act contains a lot of “mays” and “likelys” and “coulds” suggests this is poorly designed legislation that will be sent back to the drawing board. For a small media business, there appears no clear answers and, as you point out in your blog posts, if we re-seek permission to send newsletters, etc… we’ll get single-digit opt-in, no question. Part of me — the part that makes lawyers cringe — says to ignore it out of belief it will blow over and that money spent today trying to comply (and still without certainty) will be wasted tomorrow when the law is thrown out.

It is not going to go away any time soon. At some point someone is going to take a run at it on the basis that it is unconstitutional, but that will take a long time to wind its way through. And typically if a court finds a law unconstitutional they give time for the legislature to fix it. The potential penalties are sever enough that if one ignores it, and someone complains, and the CRTC investigates, the consequences could be significant.

• If a person gives you his/her business card with his/her email, is that considered consent to contact him/her via email?
• If a company posts employees emails on their company website for the public to see, is that considered consent to contact those employees by email?

CASL specifically addresses those questions. For the business card it says:

(c) the person to whom the message is sent has disclosed, to the person who sends the message, the person who causes it to be sent or the person who permits it to be sent, the electronic address to which the message is sent without indicating a wish not to receive unsolicited commercial electronic messages at the electronic address, and the message is relevant to the person’s business, role, functions or duties in a business or official capacity

For posting an email address it says:

(b) the person to whom the message is sent has conspicuously published, or has caused to be conspicuously published, the electronic address to which the message is sent, the publication is not accompanied by a statement that the person does not wish to receive unsolicited commercial electronic messages at the electronic address and the message is relevant to the person’s business, role, functions or duties in a business or official capacity

The context is that it deems implied consent in those circumstances. One unknown is how wide the “message is relevant” part will be interpreted.
And keep in mind that if accused of violating the act, you have to prove this is where you got the email address, and in the case of the business card, that they didn’t tell you not to spam them.